


A Love Outside of Time

by Iridogorgia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Hauntings, Mention of ghost sex, Paranormal, Sherlock is a paranormal investigator, mention of suicide, molliarty - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-18 23:04:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16128560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iridogorgia/pseuds/Iridogorgia
Summary: There’s a lot of strange happenings at 2945 S Willow Street, shrieks and screams and moans that have terrorized the neighbors and left the house unsold for generations.  Can the great paranormal investigator, Sherlock Holmes, exorcise the spirits living there?





	A Love Outside of Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BurningLostStars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningLostStars/gifts).



Sherlock Holmes smoothly stepped out of the hired car and flipped up the collar on his Belstaff. He surveyed the landscape with piercing blue eyes, noting the overgrown shrubs and remnants of what must have been a beautiful rose garden in it’s day, though not as wild as he would have expected. The lawn was full of weeds, a vegetable garden barely visible from around the corner, enormous carrot tops and towering leeks competing for sun.

“Someone has been tending those roses,” he murmured, eyes lingering on the creamy white and pink petals. Some of the buds were still tightly furled in on themselves, and his eyes scanned the other varieties, noting that at least half of them were rare heritage strains and a few were night blooming.

John was grabbing their bags from the trunk, paying the cabbie, and doing whatever needed to be done so Sherlock could get to work. He held out his hand, “Magnifying glass.” Still carrying the luggage up the walk, John sighed, set everything down, and dug through Sherlock’s bag until he slapped the offending piece of equipment in his hand.

“I don’t know why you don’t just get one of those miniature ones that you can carry in your pocket. It’s always the first thing you ask for.” John complained, hefting up the rest of the bags.

“Then it should always be the first thing you have at the ready,” Sherlock responded absently, looking for signs of pruning on the bushes. They seemed to just be…behaving themselves. There was no signs of snipping, pruning, plucking, any human involvement.

How very odd.

He tossed the magnifying glass over his shoulder, smirking as he listened to John curse and fumble their bags when he caught it. He strode away, calling over his shoulder, “Do keep up, John, we have much to do if we want to solve this little mystery.”

2945 S Willow Street, or ‘The Weeping Manor’ as the locals had dubbed it, was a medium-large estate. It sat on a half-acre parcel of land that was once renowned for it’s carefully tended gardens. The manor itself was an old fashioned Victorian, all gingerbread molding and candy floss colors. Pale pink with seafoam trim, all faded now, but it would have been very fashionable in it’s prime. Now, the paint was peeling, the doors were falling off their hinges, and the roof was rotting in.

An American by the name of Dozier had purchased this house, sight unseen, and had immediately called Sherlock to go ‘cleanse the place or whatever, so I can start fixing it up for resale. Nobody in that blasted town will set foot on that property until the strange occurrences have been handled.’

Sherlock Holmes was a very interesting paranormal investigator, because he did not believe in the paranormal. He simply found that calling himself such brought in a high number of unusual and interesting cases. The file on The Weeping Manor was much thicker than most, and contained some very juicy details.

The neighbors claimed that the house would emit ‘shrieks, groans, moans and other obscene noises emitted from it at all hours of the day and night’. Sometimes, the doors or windows would shake and slam, even if there was no wind. Anyone who tried to set foot inside of the house complained of chills, aches, fevers, and, in 1925, two men had quietly reported having erections that had lasted for HOURS after fleeing the property. That interesting little fact had quirked up Sherlock’s brow and had pushed him into taking the case.

That, and the fact that Dozier was paying triple his normal rate.

Of course, he would be staying a night on the property. Once he figured out the root cause of the paranormal activity, he would collect his paycheck and be on his merry way. John would put the solution up on his little blog, where fanatics would claim that spirits and ghosts and demons DID exist, they were just driven somewhere else by Sherlock himself, who might actually be a devil or some other such nonsense.

His money was on a combination of crumbling infrastructure, wild animals, and local hooligans causing trouble.

Looking up from the backyard, he saw a pale figure duck out of the way of the window, and Sherlock gave a wide smirk. “Watson! The game is afoot! Someone is in the house!”

They ran to the manor, leaping over the crumbling steps, John throwing their bags in a cobweb filled corner, before the two of them bounded up the ancient staircase. John tripped on a loose riser, the wood crumbling as it pulled away. Sherlock kept going without him, counting the rooms until he came to the one that matched the window he’d seen from the garden. He waited for John to pant his way up the stairs, holding his side. Ex-army indeed, Sherlock thought sourly.

He grasped the rusting brass doorknob and turned it quietly, Sherlock on one side of the door and John on the other. John pulled his gun and nodded once, a sharp, sure gesture.

They jumped through the doorframe together, hoping to catch an intruder in the act.

Instead, what they saw was a pretty brunette staring at them from the middle of the room, a smile on her face and a sparkle in her eye. With the angle that the sunlight was streaming through the window, they should have been able to see straight through her old fashioned white slip, yards of soft cotton with one strap slipping off of her shoulder.

Instead, they saw straight through her entirely.

She hid her smile behind one slim, delicate hand when the door behind them slammed and audibly locked. Sherlock and John turned as one, looking into the decidedly unhappy face of a man dressed to the nines in a black old-fashioned suit. His hair was slicked back and his features were all sharp angles, eyes dark and brows downturned slashes. He held a small revolver in one hand. Judging by the type of gun and the manner of dress, Sherlock quickly deduced who these two were.

“..Mr. And Mrs. Moriarty, I presume?” He asked quietly.

“Who?” John yelped, training his gun on the man while throwing quick glances behind his back at the woman.

She strode around the pair, slip floating, John getting a glimpse of her back and her long curls, going down past her waist, and then the man’s hand tangling in them as she reached him and they embraced. He glared at the paranormal investigators as he held his wife to him closely. “Jim Moriarty. Hiiii.” He waved over her shoulder with the gun.

“Molly Moriarty, née Hooper,” she tossed over her shoulder, turning her head to wink at them as her other strap fell off of her fine boned shoulders. Jim noticed and smirked, leaning down to kiss her creamy skin.

John felt himself starting to blush, “Could you two focus, please? Who are they, anyway?”

Sherlock slid an annoyed look his way, “The last owners of the house. They purchased this place, but tragically both died in December, 1900. Honestly, didn’t you read the file?”

Jim turned his face into his wife’s hair, his arm tightening around her waist. “You know the story then, Sheeerlock?” He drew out the vowel in his name, holding it in his mouth like a fine wine.

He gave a sharp nod, messy curls falling into his face. “It was in the documentation. You, James Moriarty, immigrated from Ireland at 16, woo’d the daughter of Robert Hooper, a merchant, and married her. Shortly after, he died in a mugging and you, the only male heir, inherited the business. Turned it into the most notorious criminal empire of the time.” Jim sent him a sharp smile, Molly burying her face in his neck to muffle her giggles. “Ten years and four failed pregnancies later, Molly Hooper died of consumption and what was later found to be an ectopic pregnancy. Shortly after her burial, you took your own life with the very same revolver in your hand.”

Molly shuddered against Jim, twining herself around him. Sherlock got the sense of _blood, pain, so much pain, her nightgown stained a dark red while Jim held her so close, unable to stop the agony, unable to defend her from what was killing her so so slowly_ and then _he pressed a soft kiss to her head, laying in her deathbed with her, and she was so scared “I don’t want to go without you, Jamie, how will I go to heaven with half of my soul still on Earth?” each word a gasp of pain and barely any breath at all. His response with his body tucked so close to hers “I’ll be right behind, my own, I’ll follow you into the dark.”_

_A procession with a hundred dozen roses, all colors grown in England, and the entire town turned up in black. A coach and four drawing the hearse, Jim Moriarty standing next to the grave in the rain. He’d lain all of the roses in the hole, a sweet smelling bed for his love, and then stayed late into the night to help the gravediggers cover the coffin._

_Then a single gunshot, a blinding pain, and then nothing at all._

Sherlock reeled from the assault on his senses, stumbling back from the tragic pair before him. As Sherlock and John watched, blood dripped down the back of his neck, from the crown of his head, and then out of her mouth, down her chin, covering the front of her slip. She gasped, her eyes going wide with sudden pain, and she went limp in his arms. He dropped his revolver and swept her against his chest, face contorting with hatred as he turned his eyes on Sherlock, “How DARE you bring that back into our lives? STOP THINKING ABOUT IT! STOP!”

As they watched, Jim clutched her tighter and his form seemed to split and grow, larger than life, angry energy and fear made real. John and Sherlock both felt cowed and were physically shoved to the carpet as the poltergeist screamed.

He raged and raged, growing larger and more wild, cracking a pane of glass and splintering a panel in the wall.

A slim hand, pale and almost glowing against the darkness he’d become, gently touched his cheek. A shushing sound washed over John and Sherlock like a song, keeping the despair worming it’s way into their hearts at bay. It felt like a warm ray of sunlight.

Molly, still covered in gore, was reaching up and pressing kisses to the underside of Jim’s jaw. They left red smears on the black shadow of his skin, but he was no longer growing. His form seemed to be coalescing back into something roughly human shaped. “I’m here, Jamie, I’ve already died, but so have you and we’re together forever.”

Sherlock surreptitiously looked at the room around them, noting the damage to the walls and the iced over windows. As he gave a shaky breath, ice crystals puffed into the air.

John looked at them with something akin to pity. Probably thinking of his own widower-hood, Mary in the ground for six long months already. “Why don’t you move on, to the afterlife?”

Jim was mostly human looking now, still floating in midair with Molly around him. His face was pressed into her neck, so she answered for them. “Catholic. You can’t go to heaven with a suicide, and I can’t follow him into hell.”

“That’s because you are an absolute angel,” was muffled against her, Jim’s hand drawing up her back, tangling in her hair.

She gave a sad smile, “We’ve decided to stay together, here on Earth. Almost a kind of purgatory, but as long as we’re together I would stay here for eternity.” Jim lifted his head and kissed her soundly. They floated together silently, his black suit pressed tight against her bright white slip. The blood and gore slowly vanished as the couple pressed kisses to each other’s faces and necks and when Jim tried to yank her slip down entirely Sherlock had to clear his throat.

Jim shot him a very annoyed look, “What? Can’t you leave?” He made a sharp gesture and the door banged open.

“Actually, no.” Sherlock straightened and flicked up the collar of his signature Belstaff. “I’m here on business. John, the paperwork.”

Lowering his gun fractionally, John looked at Sherlock incredulously. “Are you serious?”

Sherlock blinked at him. “Of course I am. They’re here, they’re sentient, and while this is the first time I’ve ever seen a ghost, they seem reasonably able to communicate and come to a concious decision. The paperwork, John. At your leisure.”

John grumbled, stuffing his gun back into his holster, stomping out of the door.

Jim and Molly hovered in the air, still pressed tightly together, both sets of eyes riveted to Sherlock.

“Out of curiosity, what year is it?” Molly called quietly.

“2018, Madam Moriarty.” Sherlock gave a little bow.

Her eyes widened, “Two thou-oh my, Jamie, it’s been so long!”

He pressed his cheek to the top of her head. “It feels like only a moment that you’ve been by my side, my love.”

Sherlock tossed out, “Was that you two, making all of that racket that made the neighbors complain so?”

Molly blushed very becomingly, and Jim smirked. “I’m skilled in the bedroom arts, Sir.” Molly hid her smile in his chest and he ran one hand down her back, “She is not shy with shouting her pleasure.”

Sherlock’s eyebrows crept up to his hairline. “The noises, the crashing doors, the…other events. It was you two…mid coitus?”

Jim tutted, “So crass! Are there no gentlemen in this day and age?” He gave a downright wicked smirk.

Molly’s bright red cheeks and wide smile told Sherlock everything he needed to know.

John stomped back up the stairs with a slim manila envelope. He shoved it at Sherlock and went to sit in an old chair staged by the window.

Jim and Molly looked at the folder with interest, floating a little closer while Sherlock rifled through it. “Ah, here we are. A man by the name of William Dozier has recently purchased this property at auction. I’ve been tasked with finding the source of what has been frightening the locals, so he can hire crews to restore this place to it’s former glory.” He held up a page of the contract for Jim and Molly to review.

Molly looked around her home, almost as if she was seeing it’s condition for the first time. “I…hadn’t realized it had been so long. This place used to be so beautiful…”

Sherlock started. Of course, the roses. “Who manages the roses?”

“Oh, that’s me,” Molly said absently, drifting away from Jim to look out the window. “I trained them in life to never need pruning. I hated the idea of cutting something down to make it behave the way people think it should.” Jim drifted up next to her, resting his hand on the small of her back. He pressed a kiss to the crown of her head.

“That’s why I loved you from the start, my own.” He murmured against her.

The four of them were silent for a long stretch.

“Is the contract legitimate?” Jim suddenly asked.

Sherlock nodded. “Quite. Legally binding.”

Molly leaned back against Jim, “Where would we go? We’d have to leave, to get the commonwealth to step foot on our property again.”

“Anywhere, as long as it’s with you.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

“The flat below ours is free,” Sherlock volunteered offhandedly.

John’s face turned white and he shot Sherlock a look that meant murder. His hands gripped the armrests of the chair very tightly. Jim noticed and gained an evil expression.

“In London, I assume? That accent hasn’t changed much over the years.” He sniffed.

Sherlock nodded. “I have clients. If you could become invisible, you could observe. Contribute if you wanted. Or we could just supply you with the empty flat and let you two live in peace. As long as you can contain your noises, I don’t see why that wouldn’t work.”

“What about Mrs. Hudson?” John piped up. “It’s her property, you can’t just invite ghosts in willy nilly. She might want to rent that flat out.”

Sherlock simply sent him a look that told him exactly what he thought of that commentary.

Molly turned in Jim’s arms, looking up at him, “I would like to see the world and what it has become, Mr. Moriarty. Would you join me?”

He leaned down to her, “Where you go, I will follow, Mrs. Moriarty.”

They kissed gently.

Sherlock wound up getting a bonus with his original paycheck, John got a very interesting blog article, and 221C gained two new residents who were just fascinated with modern life. Even if she didn’t know it, Mrs. Hudson started watching telly with the couple and started marveling at how her apartments stayed tidy. Molly was especially taken with the dishwasher.

It was his most satisfying case by far, and the one with the happiest ending.

**Author's Note:**

> Original prompt from BurningLostStars:  
> Jim and Molly as ghosts who have been haunting a house for decades. Not even the most fearless paranormal investigator (Sherlock Holmes) dares to set foot into the house that lets out ungodly screams every night. But the screams are actually just Jim and Molly having very WILD ghost sex :P
> 
> I really enjoyed building this world, and kind of want to write another one-shot of ghost!Molly and ghost!Jim exploring the modern world.


End file.
